Customer Reviews

Asia: Ultimate Collection

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If you're an Asia fan, you'll definitely want to check out this collection.

1) Live in Moscow

The first disc is Asia's famous live concert in Moscow in 1990 (w/ John Wetton, Geoff Downes, Carl Palmer, and Pat Thrall).

It features the songs:

Only Time Will Tell
Sole Survivor
Cutting It Fine
Days Like These
Rendezvous
The Heat Goes On
Book of Saturday
Prayin' for a Miracle
Go
The Smile Has Left Your Eyes
Open Your Eyes
Heat of the Moment
Bonus track: Kari-Anne

The performance is quite good but the sound quality is mediocre and somewhat muddy at times. It is really hard to hear the electric guitar at certain moments. However, this is such a historic performance that die-hard Asia fans won't mind. It also features the song "Kari-Anne" which a lot of Asia fans really like.

2) Live in Nottingham

It features the same line-up as the Live in Moscow (Wetton, Downes, Palmer, and Thrall). The sound is a bit better than Live in Moscow. The song set is a little bit different and features songs from the Alpha album:

Sole Survivor
Don't Cry
Voice of America
Time Again
Praying for a Miracle
The Smile Has Left Your Eyes
Only Time Will Tell
Days Like These
The Heat Goes On
Heat of the Moment
Open Your Eyes

3) Live in the USA

This features a new line-up of the band (John Payne, Geoff Downes, Chris Slade, Guthrie Govan) and the songs feature some of the new songs in Aura.

The Song Set:

The Heat Goes On
Days Like These
Awake
Arena
Military Man
Wherever You Are
Bad Asteroid
Don't Cry
Ready to Go Home
Sole Survivor
Free
Only Time Will Tell
Go
Heat of the Moment

It is fascinating to compare this new line-up with the "classic" line-up of Wetton, Downes, Palmer, and Thrall. Personally, I like John Wetton much better than John Payne. John Payne sings too melodramatically at times and punctuates the lyrics at odd places, which is distracting. The guitarist Guthrie Govan is quite good, especially on the solo parts on famous songs such as "Heat of the Moment", where he plays with much distinction and clarity. Govan sticks very closely to solos of the studio version. Chris Slade does a great job on the drums. The sound quality is a lot better than Live in Moscow. However, one can readily see by comparison that the songs written by the classic line-up (Wetton, Downes, Palmer, Howe) are way better than the songs written by the new line-up (Payne, Downes, Slade, and Govan).

I give this collection 4 stars because it is such a good deal --it is much less expensive than buying the 3 performances separately. However, I delete one star due to the mediocre sound quality of "Live in Moscow" -- which needs badly to be improved, and the "Live in USA" performance, which I did not like as much as the Moscow and Nottingham performances. I hope someday they will release a live performance with the classic line-up with Steve Howe.

I highly recommend this generous DVD collection for casual and die-hard Asia fans. You can judge for yourself which line-up is better, both in performance and the quality of the song-writing.

I've been in love with this band for over 27 years. It's just fun to watch.